“How SME’s Use Social Media”

Its the title of an infographic produced by a well known accounts software company.

It has been widely shared but I don’t know why, because it is utterly useless.

This is how posts like this try to mislead us:

There is no source information to say how many companies took part in the research. It could have been five hundred – it could have been five.

SME is a catch all for companies with up to 250 employees with a turnover of less than 40 million euros. There is no indication of the spread between small, medium and micro businesses, the split between B2B and B2C, sector, geographical spread, age of the business or any other crucial factors that could affect or skew the results.

Worst of all, the infographic blithely states the percentages for time spent, sites used and the reasons the businesses surveyed use social media, without any indication that any of them measure their results or achieve their purpose.

What is the point of knowing that 69% use social media for the purpose of getting brand awareness unless you also know how many were successful and if that is a good indication that you could do the same?

What is the point of knowing that Facebook is the most popular network used by the businesses in the survey unless you also know if they are similar to your business, what results they get and how?

Without knowing the raw data and how the questions are formulated and asked, surveys like this are worse than useless. They deliberately mislead.

There are three different ways to calculate an average and more ways to present data than there are bad infographics on social media.

That’s why the phrase “lies, damned lies and statistics” was coined.

Don’t believe anything until you see the data.

If you’d like help working out what really works for your business contact me now and we’ll have a chat about it!

I saw that, despite a huge gap in age, culture, experience and interests, we shared a lot of the same values about life, people and business.

We talked about why its important to know your “why” and that purpose and beliefs shine through and are more important than slick sales or marketing messages. We shared the importance of being personal and not trying to tweet as a brand or a logo, that wearing your knowledge on your sleeve makes you do better work and that nothing is better than a genuine connection.

The rest is in this video. We had a ball.

Best quote: “Twitter is like a dinner party on crack and you’re the host.”

When someone looks at your Twitter bio does it encourage them to follow you?

Do they see a smiling face with great eye contact that makes them feel they can trust you?

Do they read tweets that are so transparent, genuine and authentic they know immediately that they’re going to get along with you?

Do they see you making an effort to connect people and to share your best work?

That’s what makes it easy to make real connections on Twitter and, while it may not be immediately obvious, those connections are going to help you to grow your business.

In the best traditions of “its not what you know but who you know” that makes a difference, influencers and amplifiers help to spread your message to a wider audience than you could ever reach on your own.

As Dom says at the end of video:

“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

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Are you listening?

When social networks were hijacked and turned into media channels by marketers, the more savvy of them realised that a different kind of marketing was needed. Some learned, some didn’t, hey ho.

The same thing is happening with sales – except that social networking is now a mature business activity and the tools that have been designed to aid the sales process are sophisticated and very effective.

While I believe wholeheartedly that no-body joins a social network to be sold to, it doesn’t mean that social networks aren’t a good place to find people who want to buy from you.

The thing that social selling most definitely is NOT is broadcasting sales messages as in “20% off! Buy now!”

Listening is an essential sales skill

Ask what makes a good sales person and the unequivocal answer is “be a good listener”. Now, the listening happens on-line.

Where once a potential customer would ask their social group (in the pub, the gym, at the school gate or the dog training class) for recommendations for whatever they were interested in buying, these days they use their social networks – where we, the sellers, can listen in on the conversations using simple tools like Google alerts and Hootsuite.

Just like eavesdropping in the pub, you don’t jump in to somebody else’s conversation with a sales pitch, but hopefully, you’ll already have a good reputation and relationships with people who can recommend you and the potential customer will start to check you out.

They’ll want to see that your social networking accounts show that you understand their needs and their values.

They’ll check out the way you talk to people, the way you interact with existing customers and, especially, how you handle complaints.

Meanwhile, you’ve added their details to your CRM system (any CRM is better than none but ask if you need a recommendation!) From there you follow them on their social networks. On Twitter you can do this without being obvious by adding them to a list rather than simply following. For B2B sales you can check out their LinkedIn profile and see which groups they are members of and start to interact without having to be a direct connection.

Create rapport

Every good sales person does a lot of research before meeting a prospect but creating rapport could sometimes be a challenge before actually getting face to face. Not so now. With social networks you’ve probably already had several interactions and built a relationship before you get face to face.

You’ll certainly know:
Not just the size but the culture of their business
Their beliefs and values
Their interests and activities
Their attitude to their customers
What contacts you have in common
What’s happening in their world – both personal and business
What specific problem your service or product could solve
A LOT about their competitors

Marketing isn’t enough

Small businesses often shy away from selling from a fear of seeming pushy and instead, spend disproportionate amounts of time and money on marketing without following up on opportunities. The thing that makes a BIG difference to your bottom line is learning how to sell. With social selling the pushy pitch is redundant because the conversation is all about the prospect.

The tools that have been developed to help businesses take advantage of the phenomena of social networking are a sales person’s best friend and many of them are free and easy to use – certainly easier and more effective than cold calling!

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If you’d like to talk to me about how to grow your business you can email me to get the conversation started.

Sticking your logo in a stream of thousands on Twitter has no impact at all – in fact it can have a negative effect.

Even the biggest brands don’t rely on their image to get traction on Twitter. The ones that get the best results spend millions personalising their accounts and training their staff to interact in a personal, human, friendly, authentic way with real names and smiling faces.

If you join Twitter to get more business this can seem confusing. If you’ve been told that social networks are a great place to do your marketing you’ve only been told a very small part of the story.

Imagine a room full of people all brandishing their business cards and all shouting at the same time “Buy from ME!” This is what happens when businesses flock to social networks to do their marketing.

The people they are trying to sell to are not listening. They are either too busy shouting about their own business or having fun pursuing their own interests and getting to know interesting people.

So, how DO you use Twitter to get business?

In the same way that you network face to face, the first thing you have to do on line is create rapport.

You look for things you have in common with someone, you check out their interests and values.

You aim to be an interesting and useful person that others want to hang out with.

You gather a bunch of friends and fans who will go from liking YOU to being interested in what you DO.

These people may never become your customers but they’ll be happy to promote you to their friends and this is where the magic happens.

You build TRUST.

You post interesting and useful stuff that draws people into your website – and the first thing they do is check out the “About Us” page because everyone wants to know WHO they’re doing business with. If you haven’t got a picture of yourself and a great story on your website you’re wasting your most valuable on-line real estate.

Why is your picture so important?

When people meet you for the first time, face to face, they decide if they like the look of you within 30 seconds.

If they do, and they decide to have a conversation with you, their first question is usually “What do you do?”

If your on-line profile has a picture of a logo instead of your face, it’s a barrier to people making that first step towards getting to know, like and trust you.

There are millions of studies that show how human beings react to pictures of faces.

In any print or web page our eyes are immediately drawn to a face and we experience emotions based on how we react to the expression on that face.

Eyes are particularly important in creating feelings of trust. A real, open smile, one that makes your eyes crinkle, has a huge impact.

When you follow someone on Twitter they will look at your profile to see if they want to follow you back. (Unless they’re an idiot who uses autofollow in which case you’re wasting your time.) Your name and picture are the biggest influencers in this decision.

A lot of people simply won’t follow a business account because they assume you are there to sell to them. Even when someone does follow you, they will have trouble picking your tweets out of the ever changing stream, especially as most people use Twitter on their phones. They’re a lot more likely to pick you out if they recognise the general outline of your picture – so don’t change it too often!

I’ve lost count of the number of people who have started out on Twitter with a business name and logo and got very little traction. When they change to their own name and face they get more followers and more interaction and this is what leads to business.

Drop the idea of “Social Media Marketing”

No-one ever joined a social network to be sold to. Social networks are where people talk to friends and family and interact with businesses only when they want something .

If you approach Twitter as a way to build your network, bearing in mind that most people are there to waste time and have fun, you will get much better results than any attempt to market your business. That comes AFTER people have grown to like and trust you and is done by drawing people to your website where you can show off your logo as much as you like!

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Blogs are great for small businesses

Anyone who runs a small business knows the importance of finding effective ways to market their business that won’t take too much time and can be done on a minimal, or even non-existent budget.

If this is relevant to you, then say hello to the blog; it could just be your biggest ally and your new best friend.

Blogging benefits

There are many benefits to writing a blog and posting it on your website and I’m sure you’ve heard of most of them. These include:

Driving traffic to your website

Producing social media fodder

Promoting your clients and associates

Contributing to the ever important SEO

Showing off your knowledge and expertise

Capturing the attention of your target market

Building a history of work you have done over a period of time

Keeping your website fresh with new content on a regular basis

Engaging with clients and prospects by encouraging them to leave their comments

But overall, they are a very effective means of spreading information about you and your business across a far wider audience.

Given all these advantages it’s surprising to find that a large number of small business owners are reticent to start their own blog. The common concerns seem to be:

Not knowing what to blog about

Finding the time

Keeping momentum

Knowing what to blog about

I’ve heard business owners tell me they wouldn’t know what to blog about and then spend the next hour telling me, with great passion, all about their business, the fantastic product / service they offer and the benefit they provide. For me blogging is a small step from talking about your businesses and what you can do for your clients, to putting this down in short, interesting and informative blog posts. If you’re not a great writer, you can easily record audio or video content on a smart phone and add it to your blog with a minimum of fuss.

The trick is to think about what your target audience would be interested to read about or find valuable to learn.

One of the best things is to think about the questions your customers are always asking and blog about the answers you give!

Blog about the knowledge you have which could make a real difference to your existing and future clients.

Finding the Time

The first few times you write your blog you may well find that it does take some time. However you will notice over time your blogging will get easier and quicker too.

To get you started here are my top 3 time saving tips:

You don’t need to write War and Peace so don’t be afraid to keep your blog posts short, sweet and to the point.

Write about the most common questions your clients ask you.

Write evergreen content (not linked to a specific time or event) that can be re-used.

Remember your blog has the potential to reach and influence a wide and far-reaching audience. What else could you do in that same time frame, from the comfort of the your own home/office, that could have the same impact and provide as many benefits?

Keeping momentum

It is true that once you decide to commit to a blog and host on your website you do need to make a commitment to keep it coming and keep it fresh. But this need not be as daunting as it may sound, providing you apply some crafty tactics:

Write ideas for blog content on a notepad or your phone as they come into your head so you have a list of future post topics to fall back on

Write when the creativity strikes, this will not only make it easier and quicker to write the blog but also allows you to store up posts to release over a period of weeks

Find another small business blogger whose service / product complements your own and suggest exchanging guest blog posts

We all hold a vast amount of knowledge in our specialised field; don’t give it all away at once but release as a series of posts and keep your audience coming back for more

Once you have your blog written and posted on your website you need to make sure you promote it for maximum coverage and make sure you’ve got a sign up box so that people who like your posts can get new ones delivered by email. This gives you the chance to build your own mailing list which is probably the most valuable asset a blog can provide!